George Osborne: We won't borrow to fund tax cuts. (Except for David Cameron's giveaway to married couples)

Here’s a fascinating line from George Osborne’s speech to the Conservative conference:

“I’ve never been for tax cuts that are borrowed.”

He didn’t elaborate, but I can’t help but remember that only a few days ago, David Cameron announced a tax cut for millions of married couples. That tax cut will cost the Exchequer somewhere in the region of £600 million.

And where is that money coming from? Well, given that the UK Government will next year spend around £120 billion more than it will raise in tax, there’s only one way to fund it: more borrowing.

Yes, ministers can talk about finding savings elsewhere to fund the tax cut, and the more sophisticated can talk about fungibilty and the impossibility of connecting one borrowed pound to one spend pound. But the hard fact is this: if the Coalition was not giving away the married couples' tax break, it would be borrowing less money. That's an awkward fact that some people who describe themselves as fiscal conservatives should surely face up to when they sing the praises of this particular policy.

It’s almost as if Mr Osborne was is trying to hint that he thinks the married tax break is profligate and economically illiterate social engineering of the worse sort. But surely that couldn’t be the case. Could it?